Researchers discovered a dinosaur with an unusually huge nose that walked what is now Utah about 75 million years ago.
The new dinosaur species, dubbed Rhinorex condrupus (which translates to "King Nose"), was a duck-billed plant-eater commonly known as a Hadrosaur. These types of dinosaurs are usually identified by the bony crest on their heads, but the Edmontosaurus had a much fleshier crest than is typically seen, North Carolina State University reported.
The fossil was found in storage at Brigham Young University. It was first excavated in the 1990s from Utah's Neslen formation.
"We had almost the entire skull, which was wonderful," said Terry Gates, a joint postdoctoral researcher with North Carolina State and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. "But the preparation was very difficult. It took two years to dig the fossil out of the sandstone it was embedded in - it was like digging a dinosaur skull out of a concrete driveway."
The researchers believe the dinosaur was about 30 feet long and weighed more than 8,500 pounds. The Rhinorex specimen is the only complete hadrosaur fossil from the Neslen site; the finding could help the researchers gain insight into habitat segregation during the Late Cretaceous.
"We've found other hadrosaurs from the same time period but located about 200 miles farther south that are adapted to a different environment," Gates said. "This discovery gives us a geographic snapshot of the Cretaceous, and helps us place contemporary species in their correct time and place. Rhinorex also helps us further fill in the hadrosaur family tree."
The researcher is unsure what the purpose of the dinosaur's large nose was, but has some ideas.
"The purpose of such a big nose is still a mystery. If this dinosaur is anything like its relatives then it likely did not have a super sense of smell; but maybe the nose was used as a means of attracting mates, recognizing members of its species, or even as a large attachment for a plant-smashing beak. We are already sniffing out answers to these questions," Gates concluded.
The results were published in a recent edition of the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
